The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 "What Was Meant To be"
Release date: 10/6/2023
Season Finale
My initial impressions:
Cold open with Lews Therin and Ishamael: Stupid. Complete rewrite of the lore, and I am not convinced the writers will be better at it then Jordan.
Nynaeve/Elayne: pointless c-plot with the suldam. There was no benefit from infiltration like in the books and they could've just walked to the Tower in the first place. No surprise about suldam being collared and it gets redundant with Egwene later. No urgency with the arrow in the leg.
Perrin: poor Hopper was a good boy. Meanwhile, Ingtar kinda just died...and that was it. Picking up the axe finally was needed. A complete character arc.
Egwene: It was a good arc.
Mat: such abrupt completion to the tea tripping. At least he gets to blow the horn. The Hunter of the Horn sequence was good and he does a great job as the hornsounder. I think I missed Birgitte. Uno as a Hero of the Horn is great. I can get behind the shanking Rand if it plays out well, but it was one thing that made the final encounter a bit disjointed.
Rand: Indiana Jones against Turok, eh, okay. Probably because Turok probably can't use the sword with his nails. I guess Blademasters on this side of the aryth just blows your face in with fireballs. I was half expecting that Egwene was just going to finish Ishaemael... but it still left a lot to be desired
Moirine/Lan: thank god this particular arc is over. Also, can Moiraine really attack the Seanchan boat with the One Power when it was clearly not threatening her?
Forsaken: The first "death" for Ishamael. All the Forsaken are free. Moghedien seems to be good so far.
The battle of Falme itself: I do like how it seemed to be more of a battle with the WHitecloaks not getting instant wiped. It was kind of weird how they were just walking through the city without any sense of urgency. Seanchan very nerfed in the TV show. It honestly seems like the Children of the Light would have just wiped out the Seanchan and then somehow they were retreating.
Battle in the skies: was expecting more from Rand. He was just so passive and then he just stabs Ishamael who just lets himself be stabbed. Shielding Rand from a league away is...problematic. If this is possible, you could literally solve any channeler problem by shielding someone from a mile away (but I guarantee this plot device will never appear again).
Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Overall i enjoyed the episode.
They re-wrote S2 because of the complications of mats actor leaving. Originally they kept the gang together for the hunt of the horn but had to redo it all.
I had to suspend disbelief at times but it hit me emotionally at the right moments and everyone is now where they need to be for s3
It feels as if the dark one does not want this story to be told, actors leaving, covid, writing strike- but with the hand dealt to them i feel the show runners did as well as they could.
They re-wrote S2 because of the complications of mats actor leaving. Originally they kept the gang together for the hunt of the horn but had to redo it all.
I had to suspend disbelief at times but it hit me emotionally at the right moments and everyone is now where they need to be for s3
It feels as if the dark one does not want this story to be told, actors leaving, covid, writing strike- but with the hand dealt to them i feel the show runners did as well as they could.
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Trash as expected.
Perrin finally kills someone - the one cool white cloak who was chopped up not expecting it, real brave piece of dung Perrin has turned out to be. Such a trash character.
Rand and the Turok scene, I actually got excited for a sword fight but then...obviously let down, they can't spend show time on an actual good fight scene.
Rand vs Ishamael...Egwene does everything while Rand is trying to dung out of a brick in a perma constipated mode, reminded me of the 5minutes scenes of Dragon Balls Z where the characters just grunt and moan for 5 minutes before finally fighting, Ishamael...a forsaken...chosen...weaves no one has ever heard of..just gets stabbed by a guy walking towards him.
Lan/Moiraine dialogue is such trash. Then Moiraine kills all the innocent folk on 10 ships. Good job.
The Heroes of the Horn.....meh, it makes no sense at all. Mat turning the dagger into his ashandarei....meh. So much stuff is just so pointless.
Perrin finally kills someone - the one cool white cloak who was chopped up not expecting it, real brave piece of dung Perrin has turned out to be. Such a trash character.
Rand and the Turok scene, I actually got excited for a sword fight but then...obviously let down, they can't spend show time on an actual good fight scene.
Rand vs Ishamael...Egwene does everything while Rand is trying to dung out of a brick in a perma constipated mode, reminded me of the 5minutes scenes of Dragon Balls Z where the characters just grunt and moan for 5 minutes before finally fighting, Ishamael...a forsaken...chosen...weaves no one has ever heard of..just gets stabbed by a guy walking towards him.
Lan/Moiraine dialogue is such trash. Then Moiraine kills all the innocent folk on 10 ships. Good job.
The Heroes of the Horn.....meh, it makes no sense at all. Mat turning the dagger into his ashandarei....meh. So much stuff is just so pointless.
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
I’ve been living vicariously through your posts about the show. Thank you for wasting your time so that I don’t have to. o7Kryyg wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2023 10:38 pmTrash as expected.
Perrin finally kills someone - the one cool white cloak who was chopped up not expecting it, real brave piece of dung Perrin has turned out to be. Such a trash character.
Rand and the Turok scene, I actually got excited for a sword fight but then...obviously let down, they can't spend show time on an actual good fight scene.
Rand vs Ishamael...Egwene does everything while Rand is trying to dung out of a brick in a perma constipated mode, reminded me of the 5minutes scenes of Dragon Balls Z where the characters just grunt and moan for 5 minutes before finally fighting, Ishamael...a forsaken...chosen...weaves no one has ever heard of..just gets stabbed by a guy walking towards him.
Lan/Moiraine dialogue is such trash. Then Moiraine kills all the innocent folk on 10 ships. Good job.
The Heroes of the Horn.....meh, it makes no sense at all. Mat turning the dagger into his ashandarei....meh. So much stuff is just so pointless.
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Once you accept this is only comparable to second rate fan-fiction, it's not to bad. It will never a great interpretation of the written word by any means, so if you set your expectations low there is some level of enjoyment. At least it's no Rings of Power 
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Yea have accepted it’s basically a really bad fanfic. Is why I still refuse to watch.
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
I thought that low budget short film done 20 years ago by Red Eagle Entertainment was 1000000x better than the best scenes from this current version funded by Amazon.
Both were basically fan fare low quality adaptations. One was actually an adaptation that tried to stay as close to it as possible and then we have this current thing that is just some trash, appease every social movement, ignore the entire story or character developments, make dung up and have low quality acting on top of it all. I have accepted that its basically created by some turd who has not had any successful TV shows so what can you expect. Even with a blueprint he fucked up. I do have hope that someone will re-do this in the future
I reserve WoT for when I am on call sitting in a room and have no choice but to drain my brain. It has worked out well that way. I would never sit down to watch it if I had something else to do.
Both were basically fan fare low quality adaptations. One was actually an adaptation that tried to stay as close to it as possible and then we have this current thing that is just some trash, appease every social movement, ignore the entire story or character developments, make dung up and have low quality acting on top of it all. I have accepted that its basically created by some turd who has not had any successful TV shows so what can you expect. Even with a blueprint he fucked up. I do have hope that someone will re-do this in the future
I reserve WoT for when I am on call sitting in a room and have no choice but to drain my brain. It has worked out well that way. I would never sit down to watch it if I had something else to do.
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Listen, I agree that the current show sucks but Red Eagle Ent is evil. That came out in 2015 btw. 8 years ago. 4 years after GoT premiered. The only reason they made it is because if they didn't, the rights went to Jordans family. Jordans widow said it sucked and REE sued her. Once that suit ended they made the deal with Amazon in 2016 and production started for the show in 2018. They are listed as co-producers in some places.
but nah at least we got to see a word-for-word live action version of the prologue done by Billy Zane, right?
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
Well, it pains me to say this but Season 2 does follow TGH more closely than Season 1 follows EOTW; however, Season 1 set a really low bar. Much of the high-level plot was preserved, but the writers changed enough details that the story was changed in fundamental ways. Most of it I did not care for. Some of it could be blamed on budget or needing to cut to fit into a short season, other parts inexcusably tossed away the source material in favor of what the writers thought was a better story. Truth is, most screenwriters are not very good at adapting stories written by authors who are much better at telling a story than they are. I am still disappointed at Sanderson for cheerleading all this, and I hope that he was not feeding RJ's material to the wolves so that he could secure a series for his own books. I have always enjoyed his books, but...I cant explain him green lighting this crap other than getting something else out of it besides a producer credit.
In this episode I liked that the general flow of events followed the books. I wish I could say I liked it because of its spectacular portrayal of the battle of Falme and the technical aspects of how well they shot the battle and edited together all the scenes into something breathtaking, but yea, this show ain't that. I'm going to have to be content with just appreciating that the authors didnt frack this finale up as bad as they did Season 1.
There is a lot not to like about this episode but I will reserve my rants for private conversations. So here are just my top three-
1. The entire sequence of events involving the Horn of Valere was so wrong its hard to even know where to begin. For almost the entire episode I lost track of what the hell was going on with the battle, which is a bad sign, because there are alot more big ones to come in later seasons. Sometimes it seemed like the CoL were winning (even though in the books they held back rather than actually leading the attack). Sometimes it seemed like the Seanchan were winning. The heroes of the horn were underwhelming and their purpose there is not tied back at all to Rand which is a critical decision point for Rand in TGH. Artur Hawkwing was unremarkable and since the show spends more time talking about the love lives of crying Warders instead of introducing more of the rich lore of RJ's world, the audience has absolutely zero appreciation for who any of the heroes are and why they are legends in anyway. So that entire sequence with the blowing of the horn fell incredibly flat. Still, it was nice to see a 200 millisecond of someone who was probably Birgitte shooting an arrow from a bow at some Seanchan nobody cares about. Maybe we'll see her later. Probably not (sigh).
2. Moiraine's sequence at the end where she completely obliterates the Three Oaths and destroys the Seanchan ships was really bad. How could the screenwriters write a scene that was so obviously incompatible with the Three Oaths? Besides using the balefire of the writer's pen to prematurely erase Suroth from future seasons (probably), the whole scene of damane about 5 miles away holding a shield on the Dragon Reborn they couldn't even see was unnecessary. It was intended to add some suspense to the battle with Ishamael, but it came off as silly and so ruined the entire battle between Rand and Ishamael which itself was underwhelming to say the least.
3. Finally, I really disliked the fact that Moiraine proclaimed Rand the Dragon Reborn and not Rand himself and I thought the fire dragon illusion was cheap. Much of Rand's story throughout the books is centered on his choices. So we are seeing a bit of that flavor here with Moiraine fulfilling the prophesy by her own hand rather than allowing it to just happen because of Rand's choices, his raw power and his tav'eren nature. This disaster is the ultimate consequence of removing the Dragon Banner from the EOTW in Season 1. Rand uses the Dragon Banner to proclaim himself. Its the Dragon Banner that proclaimed Rand the Dragon Reborn not Moiraine's illusion. This is important imagery that signifies Rand not just the Dragon Reborn, but as a *general* who unites people under this banner and leads them as one army to the Last Battle. It was wrong of the writers to take that out of the show. But he did receive his first never healing wound and was marked by the heron the first time. Not that anyone actually cares because the show never introduced the audience properly to the Karaethon Cycle.
We got to see Elayne meet Rand...about 10 episodes late. And it was a little silly: *Rand opens his eyes* "who are you?"
Uno as not just a hero of the horn but THE hero of the horn---someone predicted this in a prior episode's thread. I think the writers wanted us to react something like "OMG, that was so awesome! I am so glad they killed Uno off in the prior episode in that really sadistic and gruesome way because we would never have seen him come back in glory as a hero and exact revenge upon the Seanchan for his humiliation! Wow!!!" Instead I pressed pause and went and fetched the bottle of Advil and mentally prepared myself to finish the episode. (the Advil didnt help) Just me talking here, but it looked like the writers wanted the Heroes of the Horn to actually matter, so rather than actually properly introducing us to who they are and what they accomplished in past lives, they went cheap and threw in a hero that we kind of already knew and made the entire heroes sequence about him. I like Uno, but this was a disgrace due to prior bad writing on the show.
So lets hope for better writing in Season 3. *shrug*
In this episode I liked that the general flow of events followed the books. I wish I could say I liked it because of its spectacular portrayal of the battle of Falme and the technical aspects of how well they shot the battle and edited together all the scenes into something breathtaking, but yea, this show ain't that. I'm going to have to be content with just appreciating that the authors didnt frack this finale up as bad as they did Season 1.
There is a lot not to like about this episode but I will reserve my rants for private conversations. So here are just my top three-
1. The entire sequence of events involving the Horn of Valere was so wrong its hard to even know where to begin. For almost the entire episode I lost track of what the hell was going on with the battle, which is a bad sign, because there are alot more big ones to come in later seasons. Sometimes it seemed like the CoL were winning (even though in the books they held back rather than actually leading the attack). Sometimes it seemed like the Seanchan were winning. The heroes of the horn were underwhelming and their purpose there is not tied back at all to Rand which is a critical decision point for Rand in TGH. Artur Hawkwing was unremarkable and since the show spends more time talking about the love lives of crying Warders instead of introducing more of the rich lore of RJ's world, the audience has absolutely zero appreciation for who any of the heroes are and why they are legends in anyway. So that entire sequence with the blowing of the horn fell incredibly flat. Still, it was nice to see a 200 millisecond of someone who was probably Birgitte shooting an arrow from a bow at some Seanchan nobody cares about. Maybe we'll see her later. Probably not (sigh).
2. Moiraine's sequence at the end where she completely obliterates the Three Oaths and destroys the Seanchan ships was really bad. How could the screenwriters write a scene that was so obviously incompatible with the Three Oaths? Besides using the balefire of the writer's pen to prematurely erase Suroth from future seasons (probably), the whole scene of damane about 5 miles away holding a shield on the Dragon Reborn they couldn't even see was unnecessary. It was intended to add some suspense to the battle with Ishamael, but it came off as silly and so ruined the entire battle between Rand and Ishamael which itself was underwhelming to say the least.
3. Finally, I really disliked the fact that Moiraine proclaimed Rand the Dragon Reborn and not Rand himself and I thought the fire dragon illusion was cheap. Much of Rand's story throughout the books is centered on his choices. So we are seeing a bit of that flavor here with Moiraine fulfilling the prophesy by her own hand rather than allowing it to just happen because of Rand's choices, his raw power and his tav'eren nature. This disaster is the ultimate consequence of removing the Dragon Banner from the EOTW in Season 1. Rand uses the Dragon Banner to proclaim himself. Its the Dragon Banner that proclaimed Rand the Dragon Reborn not Moiraine's illusion. This is important imagery that signifies Rand not just the Dragon Reborn, but as a *general* who unites people under this banner and leads them as one army to the Last Battle. It was wrong of the writers to take that out of the show. But he did receive his first never healing wound and was marked by the heron the first time. Not that anyone actually cares because the show never introduced the audience properly to the Karaethon Cycle.
We got to see Elayne meet Rand...about 10 episodes late. And it was a little silly: *Rand opens his eyes* "who are you?"
Uno as not just a hero of the horn but THE hero of the horn---someone predicted this in a prior episode's thread. I think the writers wanted us to react something like "OMG, that was so awesome! I am so glad they killed Uno off in the prior episode in that really sadistic and gruesome way because we would never have seen him come back in glory as a hero and exact revenge upon the Seanchan for his humiliation! Wow!!!" Instead I pressed pause and went and fetched the bottle of Advil and mentally prepared myself to finish the episode. (the Advil didnt help) Just me talking here, but it looked like the writers wanted the Heroes of the Horn to actually matter, so rather than actually properly introducing us to who they are and what they accomplished in past lives, they went cheap and threw in a hero that we kind of already knew and made the entire heroes sequence about him. I like Uno, but this was a disgrace due to prior bad writing on the show.
So lets hope for better writing in Season 3. *shrug*
Re: Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8 (finale) Discussion
A step up from last season's finale for sure, but still not very good. To be honest it is starting to look like bad Chinese fantasy series with the colour schemes and battle sequences, especially the whole Heroes of the Horn. I wish they'd just add some sequences of actual swordfighting/dueling. Had hoped the Turok/Rand fight would be it, it was not. Granted how he would fight with those long nails is beyond me, might've been a good decision to just kill him right away.
Ingtar sequence in the streets seemed like it was made as "fan service" but fell completely flat. "One man could hold 50..." doesn't really work when he dies to 3 people and it is in the effing streets, so the other guys get surrounded by the Seanchan who are coming from the other direction... I think it is just the continuous small decisions and tweaks like these that is putting me off. It seems like such low hanging fruit that every adaptation of an existing IP would jump to include, just to give a bit of "fan service", but it seems like every time the show tries to do it they mess it up even more.
Egwene holding Ishamael: I enjoyed the visuals a lot, I think if they continue to improve on the channeler v channeler sequences it could end up pretty damn good. I still think they have heavily botched up the shows villains. The Forsaken who should be incredibly powerful and menacing, are not. I would've loved if Egwene was holding back 2-3 damane while Rand is getting healed, Isha shows up and instantly shatters her weaves, wraps her up and then Rand gets to channeling and we could've had the whole back and forth that Egwene and Isha have between Rand and Ishamael instead.
But the show seem to have a tough time making the antagonists meaningful in any sort of way.
I liked the Moghedien/Lanfear scene, at least Moghedien seemed kind of menacing.
All in all a decent fantasy show akin to Shadow and Bones imo. Its just very mediocre, which is weird considering the budget. Hopefully they change writers for the coming season(s) and try to at least fix their fan service moments to not fall flat.
Ingtar sequence in the streets seemed like it was made as "fan service" but fell completely flat. "One man could hold 50..." doesn't really work when he dies to 3 people and it is in the effing streets, so the other guys get surrounded by the Seanchan who are coming from the other direction... I think it is just the continuous small decisions and tweaks like these that is putting me off. It seems like such low hanging fruit that every adaptation of an existing IP would jump to include, just to give a bit of "fan service", but it seems like every time the show tries to do it they mess it up even more.
Egwene holding Ishamael: I enjoyed the visuals a lot, I think if they continue to improve on the channeler v channeler sequences it could end up pretty damn good. I still think they have heavily botched up the shows villains. The Forsaken who should be incredibly powerful and menacing, are not. I would've loved if Egwene was holding back 2-3 damane while Rand is getting healed, Isha shows up and instantly shatters her weaves, wraps her up and then Rand gets to channeling and we could've had the whole back and forth that Egwene and Isha have between Rand and Ishamael instead.
But the show seem to have a tough time making the antagonists meaningful in any sort of way.
I liked the Moghedien/Lanfear scene, at least Moghedien seemed kind of menacing.
All in all a decent fantasy show akin to Shadow and Bones imo. Its just very mediocre, which is weird considering the budget. Hopefully they change writers for the coming season(s) and try to at least fix their fan service moments to not fall flat.